This was a whole lot bigger than that. There’d been only four users involved in the meeting, and since it had ended, I was able to scroll go through their entire conversation—hopefully without them knowing I was viewing it. This was a sort of leftover record of the event, rather than a real-time situation, so unless they’d put in some tracking device, they should never even know that I’d seen it. The meeting had taken place just over two weeks ago, so hopefully they’d forgotten about it still lingering around by now.
Honestly, I wasn’t even completely sure what I was looking at. A lot of it didn’t make any sense, so I screenshotted most of it try to figure out later. But even without knowing anything about who these people were or what they were talking about, I could get the gist of it.
A doomsday group. Sandy had been exactly right about that. A group called 'Ilk Krallik', whatever that meant. They were talking about a smash-and-grab job they were planning, and something called VXM, whatever that was. I saw specific directions to someplace in Ukraine, notes about cities around the world, and a lot of stuff about planes.
Then, I got to the end of the conversation and saw that the guy who seemed to have been leading the conversation had given the other three something like a company logo for them. It included a slogan.
Ilk Krallik: We will finish the world.
I grabbed one last screenshot and slammed my finger down on the X to get me the hell out of that chatroom, then shoved myself away from the computer.
We will finish the world.
I didn’t even care about the story anymore. That was done, kaput. Instead, for the second time in half an hour, I was asking myself what the hell I’d managed to get myself into.
A doomsday cult based in Bursa, Turkey, this group has spread its influence throughout the country and into other parts of Europe, the US, and beyond, and is responsible for attacks on the public in 2017, 2018, and 2019, I read from the screen in front of me.
My first search for Ilk Krallik had brought up a wealth of information. I’d grabbed the first link and screenshotted everything on the page so I could read through it without being online. I was now into the second paragraph, and already I was terrified.
These people were real-live nut jobs. I mean, I’d known some bad people, but these Ilk Krallik believers—or whatever you called members of a cult—were something else. They were on an entirely different level. They didn’t seem to have any religious affiliation, but they were definitely looking to end the world as we knew it. They were positive that the end was in fact coming—and that it was their destiny to help it along. That they would be able to take over the world once the rest of civilization was gone.
I turned back to the copies I’d made of their conversation, looking for connection points between the pedestrian story I was reading on-screen and what these freaks had actually said, my blood icy in my veins.
We will finish the world. The cult’s tagline haunted me with an eerie, sick feeling.
I got an online translator up, then typed in the name of the cult. The result came up as “First Kingdom” in English. Well, that wasn’t creepy or anything. And again, their objectives were pretty clear.
So, evidently, this cult had started in Bursa but had spread through Turkey and the world at large as it grew in importance and relevance.
“Relevance to what?” I whispered. How could a cult that wanted to legitimately end the world suddenly be relevant, and to whom?
I pulled the screenshots of the conversation back up in front of me and glanced at the location they’d cited in Ukraine. They hadn’t given a city or specific name, but there were coordinates for latitude and longitude.
I typed the coordinates in, hit enter, and narrowed my eyes. The map showed… Pripyat. A Ukrainian city I’d never heard of. Another quick search told me that this was actually an abandoned city, one of the victims of the Chernobyl disaster.
The entire area had been abandoned. So why did Ilk Krallik want to go there? It was still too poisonous for people to live there, and though trees and plants were now growing in the area, there weren’t even animals there.
Narrowing my eyes, I scrolled down to the end of the page to find the fine print.
And there, I found my answer.
The city has become home to those who are brave enough to dare the radiation, I read. And those people are there for one reason: To do things they don’t want the Ukrainian government to know about.
But it wasn’t home to Ilk Krallik. So what exactly did that city have that the Ilk Krallikers wanted?
My eyes flew back to the conversation and I scanned through it, looking for other words I could research, anything else that might give me a hint as to what was going on here. The acronym “VXM” came up a fair bit, which sounded like some sort of drug. Was Ilk Krallik funding their doomsday plan through a cartel business?
I ran a search on "VXM" and had to sift through various other acronyms that I knew didn't fit until I found the most probable answer.
“A series of binary chemical weapons,” I breathed out. “Originated from the Soviet Union.”
What followed was a complicated chemical breakdown that included words I’d never even heard before—something involving neurotransmitters and enzymes—but when I got to the end of the sentence, the meaning was clear. This was a nerve gas. In high enough doses, it killed people in less than ten minutes through paralysis, extreme body spasms and excruciating pain, before eventually shutting down every organ and suffocating the person from the inside when their lungs ultimately gave out.
And this psycho cult clearly had their hands on it.
My gaze drifted back to the information on the city in Ukraine, and I read that last line again. A city where people were doing things they didn’t want the government to know about.
Things, I wondered, like mass-producing a lethal nerve agent?
A hammering at the door brought me abruptly out of my research haze and I jumped half a foot out of my seat, stifling a surprised yelp.
Then, I started panicking. Oh God, someone had found out what I was doing. The FBI was here. The cult terrorists knew I’d been researching them, and they’d already shown up to kill me. Sandy had set me up, the bastard!
I rushed around the room like a chicken with my head cut off, doing nothing at all as I tried to get my brain to kick into gear. For so long, I’d had an escape plan at the ready, just in case of anything going wrong, and that had always included packed bags and a Tupperware full of snacks for the road. I'd let myself get complacent in my fairly quiet life in the very quiet town of Ashland.
None of my stuff was ready, none of it! I had a back door, but—
“FedEx,” someone called from the front door, and I froze in my tracks.
Would assassins try to make you think they were someone else if they came to your door to kill you? Absolutely. I’d seen the movies. I knew.
But the FBI wouldn’t leave you in any doubt about who they were. They’d tell you straight to your face that they were the FBI and were there to arrest you.
I estimated that meant I had a 50/50 chance of that guy actually being from FedEx. And a 50/50 chance of him being an assassin from a secret cult of people who wanted to kill the entire world and were going to start with me because I’d been spying on them.
Still, 50/50 weren’t the worst odds I’d ever faced.
I crept toward the door, keeping myself low to the ground—as if that was going to do any good if they were there to kill me—then rose up just high enough to look through the peephole when I got there.
Guy in a FedEx hat and shirt, check. Packages around him, check. Electronic keyboard thingy in his hand. Check.
But all of that could also be a disguise.
My God, you’re paranoid, I lectured myself silently. But I also knew there was a good reason for that.
“I’ve just gotten out of the shower and I’m only wearing a towel, any chance you can leave it on the doorstep?” I called through the door.
If he was just a FedEx guy, he’d say 'yeah, no problem, I’m supposed to get a signature but who really waits for that sort of thing anyhow?'. If he was an assassin, I was guessing the leave-it-at-the-door option would be turned down.
“Sure, no problem!” he called.
He dropped a package on my doorstep, making me cringe and try desperately to remember what I might have ordered and whether it was breakable. Then, he turned and jogged down the steps and toward a van that looked pretty realistically FedEx-ish.
I rose up onto my tiptoes and maneuvered myself so I could see the package now lying on my front step. It didn’t look like anything special, but I still couldn’t remember if I’d actually ordered anything or not.
Which meant that, for the time being, that package was going to stay firmly put on the front step.
I turned and made my way quickly back to my office nook. I didn’t need to do any more research on this group to know that something seriously bad was going on. Right now, I needed to figure out what the hell I was going to do about it.
I wasn’t any more heroic than Sandy. I wasn’t a superhero. But I also wasn’t going to let the world end around me. Not if I had the option to keep it from happening.
But first, to figure out what that package was—pipe bomb or phone case?
Chapter 5
“Ms. Lopez, I don’t believe I have to tell you how… well, how paranoid you sound,” Parker said over the phone, his tone managing to be both pitiful and condescending at the same time. “You’re clearly upset about having been let go and trying to create trouble where there is none. I always knew you had an overactive imagination—what good journalist doesn’t?—but this is well beyond that, young lady. It’s crazy sounding, and I’m not going to print anything like it in our paper.”
I took a deep, steadying breath before I spoke, and decided to push all the passive-aggressive insults swirling in my mind out. It wasn’t like me to pass up a chance to argue with someone who was trying to put me down, but I had bigger fish to fry at the moment. And it was vital that Parker believe me about this particular fish.
“Parker, this is a big deal,” I told him quietly. “This is a cult actually planning to exterminate as much of the population as possible. And I’ve got proof—exactly what you've always wanted me to have when I came to you with a story idea.”
There was a pause, and then, “How many people do you think are in danger?”
“Millions, if not billions,” I said quickly. I’d done my research, and I knew the questions he would ask. I was already prepared with the answers. “Depending on how they release it, and where. The cult have already started mass-producing the nerve gas and have plans to get their hands on a few dozen planes. Hell, that was over two weeks ago. They probably have planes by now. When the gas is released over the major cities they're planning to fly over… it will cause mass destruction of the human race as we know it. All they really need now is a few dozen people to transport the gas and fly the planes, and Ilk Krallik already have supporters all over the northern hemisphere.”
I was surprised he’d even asked, honestly. It wasn’t like Parker to show so much curiosity. My heart was starting to jump in my chest. If he asked, it meant he was listening. And if he was listening, it might mean he was going to do something about it. I didn’t know what the ‘do something’ part might be—not yet—but I was positive that we had to do something. We couldn’t just let a threat like this go by without responding or making some sort of preparation. Without freaking warning people.
Parker’s mind must have been moving along the same sort of lines.
“And what do you expect us to do? You come to me with this crazy story, and you won’t tell me how you’ve found out about it to start with. You have these outlandish ideas about some cult from Turkey and a nerve agent from Ukraine—one that the Soviets supposedly first manufactured—and you say the population of the entire world is in danger. You sound like a textbook-case paranoid schizophrenic, like someone who probably should be committed to an institution. Even then, let’s say I believe you, even though I’ve yet to see any evidence for any of this being true…”
My heart beat harder. Believe me, believe me, believe me, I begged silently.
I didn’t want to be the only person—other than Sandy, who seemed pretty done with his involvement, to be honest—with this information on my hands. I didn’t want to be the only person responsible for getting it out there. I was already so far behind them, and I was one against four. I needed to have an ally—even if it was a boss I’d hated the entire time I worked for him, and who had just fired me.
When Parker finished his thought, though, the excitement that had started to fill me quickly died out.
“That doesn’t mean I can just drop everything and publish a story like this. First of all, Ashland Weekly is—let's be realistic here, Michelle—a small-town paper that covers small, insignificant local news."
“I know, but—”
“And you’re assuming that anyone in the wider world would even read anything we published,” he continued, interrupting me. “You’re assuming we would have enough reach to save anyone, when you and I both know that our readership is pretty much restricted to Ashland itself. If I were to believe you enough to publish this story, Ms. Lopez—and I’m not saying that I do, but if I did—you might be able to save our sleepy little town of Ashland. Not the world.”
“But maybe the bigger papers would pick it up,” I said, prepared for this particular argument as well. “If it made a big enough splash, if we could get enough publicity for it, maybe we could get it to spread.”
“Doubtful,” he responded. “Very doubtful. There’s no reason for them to be watching the local Ashland paper. Even if, somehow, our story got picked up by the bigger publications, it could cause mass hysteria in the public, chaos in society, and that’s no good for anyone. We don't want to accidentally bring on the end of the world by the suggestion of our own impending doom, right? And what happens when people go digging into you, the article's author, and find out the circles you used to run in, and the dark places of the internet where I can only assume you have gathered this information? When the FBI find out about another clear violation of your probation order and the fact that you didn't go to them with this life-threatening, world-ending information? Hmm?"
Parker left that hanging, and it reminded me that I was fighting an uphill battle here—particularly when it came to the law enforcement contacts I was going to be trying to pull strings with. I doubted most of them would even talk to me about this, due to that notoriety.
But I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I hadn’t wanted to get involved in this, and I definitely didn’t want this information. But I had it now, and I wasn’t going to just hold on to it. I wasn’t going to get stuck holding this ticking time bomb by myself. I would not be the person responsible for the end of the world through inaction and cowardice.
“Parker, if I’m right, and these people are well on their way in assembling the pieces of their plan, how long do you think it’ll be before they do something with it?” I asked quickly. “How long before they launch their attack? We know it’s going to happen. Ilk Krallik is going to release nerve gas all over major cities and restart society from scratch themselves. That's clear enough from their name and slogan! What’s the worst that can happen if we run the story? If I’m wrong, you put out a statement about your reporter having gone off the rails and having a mental breakdown, yadda yadda. I’m the one who pays the price, at the end of the day, and that won’t even matter, since I’ll probably be assassinated by the very cult I’m reporting on. But if I’m right, and it saves people’s lives—”
“I can’t,” he said firmly. “I’m sorry, Ms. Lopez. I really do wish you the best of luck with your future endeavors, and I hope you can find a place where you fit a bit better. A place that is better equipped to deal with your… colorful ideas. Good day.”
The line went dead. Parker had hung up
on me.
Dammit! Dammit, dammit, dammit. He’d believed me. Or, at least, had been interested. I’d been able to hear that much in his voice. But, at the end of the day, I guessed he was just as much a coward as everyone else I’d spoken to.
Because he wasn’t the first. Oh no, he definitely hadn’t been the first I’d called. Are you kidding? He was the man who’d just fired me, for God’s sake! He’d been the fifth on my list. The first four were other contacts I’d had in the newspaper industry—reporters and editors that worked for bigger publications.
I’d started making my calls the second it turned nine in the morning—after I'd deduced that yes, indeed, the FedEx package was a new phone case I'd ordered from China a few weeks ago, made myself a late-night meal of ramen noodles, and tried to get what little sleep was possible with my bloodstream at max capacity of adrenaline.
The first two contacts I'd called had been an instant bust. I hadn’t really gotten more than three hours' sleep and my thoughts weren't in order. I hadn’t done enough research and my ideas tumbled out like a word vomit salad. I could fully admit that I really did sound like a crazy person, and I didn't really blame those first two contacts for hanging up on me.
I'd gone back to the information I had and started to really suss out Ilk Krallik's plan, then organized it into the explanation I gave my next two phone calls and, ultimately, Parker.
The second two contacts—both from national, though somewhat alternative papers— had the decency to hear me out, but then politely told me that they would never publish anything based on hearsay from the dark web. They had reputations to uphold, they could never put themselves at risk with such an unproven, radical idea.
They’d be sorry. Because the more research I’d done, the more I’d realized that this absolutely, positively wasn’t a conspiracy theory.
Fact number one: Ilk Krallik was, for certain, already creating VXM. They had already employed a team of chemists, gotten their hands on the materials and equipment, and were currently fine-tuning the chemical creation process. That much had become clear from a thorough read of the chat—which I’d had to take over an hour to really make sense of, as they'd used a mixture of English, Turkish, and Ukrainian in the conversation. By now, they’d almost definitely gotten the formula down and had produced what they needed.
Survival of The Fittest | Book 1 | The Fall Page 3